The One Great Thing AOL Had Going Went Kablooey Last Quarter

AOL's giant "Project
Devil" ads have apparently fallen off in popularity,
according to a note by Ben Schacter of the Macquarie
Research Group.

He writes, "AOL sold fewer oversized/custom ad units in 4Q’11
(28% of days) than in 4Q’10 (40% of days), and we did not see a
single Project Devil ad on the homepage in 4Q."

The "Project Devil" ads were one of the few big successful,
innovative projects from Tim
Armstrong at AOL. Instead
of a page cluttered with a bunch of small banners he slapped a
giant ad on AOL's page that cost more for advertisers, but was
supposed to deliver better results.